Agriculture, Beverages & Food

China won't sacrifice income support for farmers in talks this week to join the World Trade Organization, officials and analysts said yesterday. Read More

The tobacco industry exerted pressure in Switzerland throughout recent decades to prevent the approval of stricter measures against smoking, says a study sponsored by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Read More

A combination of two widely used agricultural pesticides - but neither one alone - creates in mice the exact pattern of brain damage that doctors see in patients with Parkinson's disease. The research offers the most compelling evidence yet that everyday environmental factors may play a role in the development of the disease. Read More

Here is the annual Top 10 Worst Corporations of 2000 list compiled by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman. This year, rushing to the head of the pack of irresponsible biotech companies was the French corporation Aventis, the maker of Cry9C corn, sold under the name StarLink. Read More

After a week of deliberations to ban the world's most toxic chemicals, delegates have reached an agreement, which ''constitutes a declaration of war on persistent organic pollutants,'' said conference chairman John Buccini. Read More

According to the World Health Organisation, tobacco use is set to cause an epidemic of heart disease and cancer in developing countries. Currently, 4 million people die each year from tobacco use, but that number is set to rise to 10 million a year by 2030. In addition to premature death, smokers suffer from an ongoing degradation of their health due to smoking. Read More

Sikri Kalan is a ''Green Revolution'' village. The term is derived from India's three-decade-old farming revolution, which was ushered in by high-yielding wheat crops that helped make the country self-reliant in food. Read More

In time for Thanksgiving, the United Farm Workers union ended its 16-year ''Wrath of Grapes'' boycott Tuesday -- halting the longest of its three California table grape boycotts. Read More

The aerial fumigation program that has grown out of the U.S. government's so-called ''war on drugs'' is endangering the fragile ecosystems and indigenous cultures of Colombia's Amazon Basin, a coalition of groups warned today at a news conference on Capitol Hill. Read More

The European Commission said today that it had filed a civil lawsuit in the United States against the Philip Morris Company and the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company seeking damages for what it called their involvement with organized crime in smuggling cigarettes into Europe. Read More